Sculpin

I had a bit of an unnerving morning today. I’d stayed up very late doing the Emerald City Search treasure hunt, so at about 10:15 a.m. I was still dozing when my coworker Bob pounded at my door. He’d injured his back and couldn’t play his case today, the big demanding End of Life role. Could I do it? Please please? When does it start, you ask? Oh, in forty-five minutes.

Time seemed to slow while I decided. I hadn’t played the case since February, but I knew I could do it, and Bob looked like he was in a lot of pain. Knowing isn’t enough to keep the adrenaline at bay, though. ZAP! Run run run go go go! I slammed through the house at speed, talking myself through the case as I showered quickly, the old case notes flooding back to me, and then it was into the clothes and out the door and into Bob’s car and away we go. Poor extroverted Bob was already having a long day, and I hope I didn’t offend him: I forgot about social skills, I was that task-focused. The civilized veneer, such as it is, dropped; I was 100% doing the thing.

Half a mile from work, Bob gets a call: oh, hey, they canceled that session. *pant pant pant whew* It all worked out elegantly, but damn, that was a rush. I’d compressed half a day’s worth of preparation and performance anxiety into about half an hour, and it felt like my brain was on fire.

Nothing calms the nerves like making something. What I made was ratatouille. Almost all of this came out of our own garden — it’s been a great year for peppers, eggplants, and tomatoes. There are a hundred thousand ways to cook ratatouille; this just happens to be what I did today. A little rosemary and savory wouldn’t go amiss in here, maybe some cayenne, maybe even a tiny touch of lavender. Normally I’d add the tomatoes at the end, but these were so startlingly sweet that I wanted them to fall apart entirely so they could coat everything else. No need to peel the vegetables, by the way — nobody’s getting that fancy ’round here.

Ratatouille
(enough for two generous bowls)

olive oil
generous amount of garlic — I used about 2 T in roughly a 3mm mince
1/2 large onion, chopped
5 smallish, very ripe tomatoes, chopped (about 2-3 medium)
2 Japanese-type eggplant, chopped in roughly 1-cm dice
2 large zucchini, diced
1 green pepper, diced (I used a fabulous yellow Gypsy pepper)
1/2 cup of vegetable stock or less
a dash of vodka or other mildly flavored alcohol
a small handful each of basil and parsley, chopped or chiffonaded
three stems’ worth of thyme

Gently sweat your garlic and onions in a little olive oil until they’re translucent. Add tomatoes and cook with a dash of vodka, stirring often, until they’ve fallen apart and reduced into a paste. Add a little vegetable stock to deglaze, then your chopped vegetables. Stir it all up, adding vegetable stock as needed to lubricate the vegetables for easier stirring. Simmer until tender. (About fifteen minutes with this particular batch of vegetables, iirc.) Add the herbs and let them wilt and perfume the dish. Salt and pepper to taste.

This would be good served with crusty bread, or even as an omelet filling, but I just ate it as-is and was perfectly well satisfied.

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